Jorge Atilano, S.J., was returning to Mexico City when his vehicle bumped up against a roadblock in the mountains of Puebla state. He had encountered a narcobloqueo, in which drug cartel thugs commandeer and burn vehicles, forcing him to turn around and head back to Veracruz on Mexico’s Gulf Coast. “It was an all-day trip,” he recalled of the ordeal.
Mexico exploded in violence on Feb. 22 after Mexican special forces killed drug cartel leader Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera, leader of the fearsome Jalisco New Generation Cartel, known by its abbreviation in Spanish as C.J.N.G.
Cartel foot soldiers fanned out across 20 states, burning vehicles and buildings in attacks claiming at least 70 lives, including 25 National Guard members, according to the Mexican Defense Secretary General Ricardo Trevilla, who fought tears as he lauded the slain soldiers.
The tactic of commandeering and burning vehicles has been a calling card of the C.J.N.G. It also functions as a form of blackmail. “It’s meant to produce images that raise panic and increase political costs” for going after cartel bosses, said Falko Ernst, a political analyst in Mexico City.
‘The kingpin strategy’
A priest, who asked to be unnamed because of security concerns, serves in a part of Michoacán state rife with drug-cartel conflicts known as Tierra Caliente. He said of the situation in Michoacán following Mr. Oseguera’s arrest and subsequent death, “There are several cartels here. Let’s see what happens, let’s hope they weaken them even more.”
But he remains concerned that eliminating El Mencho will not necessarily pacify the region. More violence, in fact, could be the outcome of what analysts call the “kingpin strategy”: Authorities may succeed in “decapitating” a drug cartel by capturing or killing its leader, but when underlings battle for control of leaderless criminal organizations, violence and a fragmented criminal landscape often result.
“They arrest one person here and more people turn up,” the priest said.
As the country convulsed with violence, Cardinal Carlos Aguiar Retes, archbishop of Mexico City, called for national collaboration.
“We are aware of the difficult times we face as a society,” the cardinal said in a Feb. 22 statement. “Therefore, I address this message to encourage us and call upon us to be collaborators for the common good, promoting the justice and social peace we need.”
“We must also collaborate in healing the wounds of those who have been hurt or indirectly affected,” he said, inviting Mexicans “to raise our prayers to God the Father in every corner where we find ourselves, and invoke Him to help us recover the harmony and social fraternity we need.”
Videos of black smoke billowing over the tourist city of Puerto Vallarta went viral, while social media scares and apocalyptic rumors were rife. Among them: gunmen supposedly storming the Guadalajara airport, an A.I.-generated image of a burning airplane and stories of cartel plans to raid hotels and kill foreigners. Schools and businesses closed, while bus lines cancelled service. Catholic dioceses in western Mexico offered dispensations from Sunday Mass and closed churches.
Outbreaks of cartel violence were recorded in more than half of Mexico’s 31 states, a sharp demonstration of the scope, savagery and long reach of the C.J.N.G. It was also a rude reminder of the limits of the capacity of the Mexican state in its ongoing confrontation with the criminal groups that control vast swaths of territory across the country, corrupt and cow politicians and deploy terror tactics to protect their interests.
“It shows how deeply rooted organized crime is in Mexico,” Father Atilano said of the spasm of violence. “They’ve created a network that manages to instill panic in citizens.” He added that this criminal network could only become so entrenched with the complicity of the authorities.
Father Atilano has seen the level of criminal infiltration into Mexican life firsthand as he travels the country for his mission as director of the National Dialogue for Peace, an initiative sponsored by the Mexican bishops’ conference, the Jesuits’ Mexico province and the Conference of Religious Superiors of Mexico.
“We’ve tried to work with police forces,” he said, “and we realize they are already compromised.”
The National Dialogue for Peace emerged from the 2022 murders of Jesuits Javier Campos and Joaquín Mora, who were shot dead by a local gang cartel boss while sheltering a man he chased onto their parish grounds in the Sierra Tarahumara of northern Chihuahua state.
The church initiative has offered a space for victims to be heard, and the dialogue’s organizers have worked with experts from civil society to develop best practices to promote civic peace. Its leaders present their proposals to regional political leaders and sponsor programs to repair the social fabric in communities afflicted by violence.
Restored U.S. collaboration
An elite unit of Mexico’s National Guard carried out the operation that killed Mr. Oseguera in the municipality of Tapalpa, some 80 miles south of Guadalajara. Intelligence agents trailed one of his lovers into the town of alpine cabins in the pine-covered hills of western Jalisco state.
Mr. Oseguera fled into the woods along with two bodyguards, who fired rocket launchers at the pursuing soldiers, according to General Trevilla. The cartel boss was injured in the raid and died of his injuries while being flown to Mexico City.
Mexican and U.S. agencies jointly provided intelligence to colleagues in the Mexican army, a level of sharing and cooperation that has been routine in previous efforts to capture cartel bosses but rarely discussed because of its impact on public sensibilities over Mexican sovereignty. But this time both the Mexican military and the White House highlighted the information exchange.
“We as the armed forces have greatly strengthened that relationship with the United States Northern Command,” General Trevilla said on Feb. 23. “And that exchange of information is extremely important.”
For his part, President Donald Trump claimed credit for the C.J.N.G. leader’s demise in his State of the Union address on Feb. 24. “We’ve also taken down one of the most sinister cartel kingpins. You saw that yesterday,” he said to applause on the capture and killing of El Mencho.
Just the day before on social media, Mr. Trump had said: “Mexico must step up their effort on Cartels and Drugs!”
And he also promoted an appearance on Fox News by Derek Maltz, former acting director of the Drug Enforcement Administration, who said, “This is a wake up call for the world about the treachery of the Mexican cartels. That’s why President Trump declared them as terrorists.”
More bullets, fewer hugs?
The slaying of El Mencho marked another example of Mexico’s increasing security cooperation—by choice or coercion—with the United States. That relationship had frayed during the 2018 to 2024 administration of former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
Political analysts in Mexico said the raid highlighted Mr. Trump’s relentless pressure on Mexico to curb fentanyl production, halt migration and deal with drug cartel violence or face the threat of U.S. military intervention. Mexico has also handed over nearly 100 accused cartel bosses to face U.S. justice over the past year, impeded migrants from reaching the U.S. border and allowed U.S. drone flights over the country.
“Sunday’s operation was not a spontaneous turn of events, but the result of sustained pressure from the White House that altered the incentives of the Mexican state,” wrote Brenda Estefan, international affairs columnist with the newspaper Reforma. “The bilateral security relationship has entered a more demanding phase with less political room for ambiguity.”
The take down of El Mencho demonstrated that Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has reversed the security policy “abrazos, no balazos”—“hugs, not bullets”—implemented by her predecessor and mentor, Mr. López Obrador. The policy emerged from a 2018 campaign slogan for addressing what the then-candidate considered the root causes of crime: poverty and corruption. But observers say it remained ill-defined and represented in practice passivity toward drug cartels.
“In one way or another [hugs, not bullets] allowed the rampant growth of organizations like…the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which grew tremendously,” said Father Omar Sotelo, director of the Catholic Multimedia Center, which tracks violence against the Catholic Church in Mexico.
“The fact that we’ve reached this point and that the federal government has to take action against organized crime under pressure from an external government shouldn’t have happened in the first place,” he added. “Mexico has the capacity to resolve these kinds of internal problems.”
The slaying of Mr. Oseguera follows Mr. Trump musing that U.S. troops, fresh off toppling Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, were going to “start now hitting land, with regards to the cartels.” He has urged his Mexican counterpart Ms. Sheinbaum to let the United States take the lead in combatting cartels, according to The New York Times—an offer she has repeatedly rejected.
The raid on El Mencho also comes ahead of the July review of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. Mexico’s economy depends heavily on the U.S. market, which purchases more than 80 percent of its exports. But the deal’s permanence increasingly depends less on commercial matters than on Mexico’s willingness to stop migration—which has collapsed at the northern border—and its cooperation with the United States on security matters.
“Security cooperation is no longer on a separate track; it has become a gatekeeper for economic certainty,” wrote Diego Marroquín Bitar, a Mexican trade expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. “For Mexico, the task is no longer to demonstrate goodwill, but to deliver durable results that can withstand political pressure in Washington.”
The United States offered $15 million for Oseguera’s arrest. But his days were probably numbered after the C.J.N.G. tried to assassinate Omar García Harfuch—police chief in Mexico City under Ms. Sheinbaum when she was mayor—in a posh neighbourhood in 2020. Mr. García Harfuch’s bulletproof vehicle was hit by high-powered rifles and grenades.
Now federal public security secretary, he has since become Ms. Sheinbaum’s pointman in Mexico’s improving security relationship with the Trump administration.
Under Mr. García Harfuch, the federal government has preferred to target “generators of violence,” according to Mr. Ernst, placing the C.J.N.G. at the top of the list.
Under Mr. Oseguera, a former police officer, the C.J.N.G. controlled and contested territories across the country, trafficked vast amounts of cocaine to the United States and battled the authorities. C.J.N.G. shot down an army helicopter in 2015, forcibly recruited young people and carried out multiple narcobloqueos. The cartel littered towns with landmines in Michoacán state, where it fought for territory, and dropped bombs on rivals with drones. It even operated timeshare scams targeting foreign tourists.
The C.J.N.G. corrupted public officials, too. The mayor of Tequila—cultural cradle of the iconic drink—was arrested on charges of extorting distillers and has been accused of having ties to the cartel. Former interior minister Adán Augusto López, until recently the leader of the governing Morena party’s senate delegation—was named in military intelligence documents for allegedly handing over control of the state public security secretariat to a commander belonging to a criminal organization with ties to the C.J.N.G. Mr. López, a close ally of Mr. López Obrador, has denied wrongdoing.
Ms. Sheinbaum has come under U.S. pressure to target politicians accused of drug cartel ties, including heavyweights in the ruling Morena party. The topic of drug cartel collusion can be an uncomfortable topic in Mexico as many public officials face a stark choice: plata o plomo, silver or lead—meaning they take the payoff or get killed. Nearly three dozen candidates in regional elections or people connected to political campaigns were killed during the 2024 election cycle.
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